Now it's crucial to make the hard decisions and devote real money to the looming transportation crisis, says Metrolinx's citizen advocate.

Buses pull up to the Downsview TTC station, marking the northern end of the University-Spadina subway line, where thousands of cars carrying single occupants pass by daily. April 10, 2008

By:Paul Bedfordspecial to the Star, Published on Fri Apr 18 2008

How much would you pay to reduce traffic gridlock, improve the environment and develop an excellent regional transit system that made you less car dependent? Have you ever thought what you would do if you could no longer drive? These are the kind of questions that we must answer together.

This June, the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, better known as Metrolinx, will be releasing a draft Regional Transportation Plan for the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) that will spell out a comprehensive set of proposed transportation initiatives that will transform our travel patterns and transportation choices. It will be followed by a series of ideas for funding it.

Everyone needs to figure out how to get to work, to school, to shop or to travel for recreation, entertainment or health care. Nothing short of a very bold transit vision is required for the region, including more subways, streetcar lines, buses, bus rapid transit, all-day GO train service and more frequent and dependable service. The goal must be a transit network so good people will be able to live without depending on a car and not feel deprived. This is a tall order, but we have run out of time.

Facts of life

Over the next 25 years, the Greater Golden Horseshoe region is expected to grow by 3.7 million people, to 11.5 million. How can it accommodate the transportation needs of that many people?

The roads we have today will largely be the roads we'll have in 2031. We must learn to use the same space to move more people.

Transit can carry volumes of people that roads simply can't match. For example, the TTC carries about 1.5 million riders per day, more than the populations of Calgary or Ottawa. GO Transit carries about 205,000, taking the same number of cars off the road as the Gardiner Expressway carries daily.

Each day, more people travel through Union Station than through Pearson airport. The only logical conclusion is that transit is the way to address our growth challenges.

Personal costs

According to the Canadian Automobile Association, if you operate a six-cylinder vehicle in the GTHA and drive 24,000 kilometres per year, the annual cost amounts to $12,834. (This includes purchase/lease, insurance, gas, repair, maintenance and depreciation.)

By comparison, the yearly cost of a TTC Metropass is $1,200, while a GO rider from Burlington to Toronto would pay $3,312. Over a working lifetime of 40 years, the car owner will spend $513,360; the TTC rider, $48,000; the Burlington GO rider, $132,480. If you operate two average cars you will spend close to $1 million on vehicles!

Clearly, there is a huge personal incentive for people to pay for a transit system that makes them less car-dependent.

Our collective challenge

To be successful, the regional plan must do three things: address congestion, improve the environment and generate new revenue sources to build a network capable of serving a future regional population of more than 11 million people.

To make a major difference, investment needs to grow from the current average of $700 million per year collectively spent by the GTHA transit authorities to $2 billion to $3 billion per year for the next 25 years.

This is a staggering sum, but it's the price we have to pay for underfunding transit for the last 20 years.

It's crucial to find revenue sources that political leaders and the public will support.

You get what you pay for

We have a fundamental choice to make: We can continue to rely on more of the same and wait for the federal government to become a financial partner with the province, or we can collectively embrace a menu of regional money sources dedicated to aggressive transit development within five years.

No one likes to pay more taxes or fees, but combinations of several of these sources could generate an extra $2 billion per year. The extensive list of options that could be considered includes:

Regional road pricing on the GTHA network of 400-series highways and municipal expressways.

Local road pricing and parking space pricing similar to what the Netherlands is doing.

A regional gas tax of up to 12.5 cents per litre, the amount now collected by the Regional Transit Authority (Translink) for Metro Vancouver.

A regional sales tax of 1 per cent or less, similar to those already in place in Metro Minneapolis and proposed in Los Angeles County and Tampa Bay.

A regional vehicle registration levy similar to the one passed in Toronto and used in most large U.S. cities.

A regional climate-change mitigation or emissions tax, levied against less fuel-efficient vehicles, or even a regional income tax, like that in place for decades in many large U.S. cities.

I appreciate that each of these revenue ideas would generate a long-overdue public debate. However, I also believe people are at a tipping point over the personal costs of region-wide gridlock. People want action and they want to be able to see and experience a substantial improvement in available choices.

This will only happen if we are prepared to embrace an appropriate mix of new revenue tools in combination with conventional senior government funding and transit fare revenue.

Ironically, these choices could appeal to both the right and left sides of the political spectrum, as they address both the user-pay philosophy and greening the environment.

Choices and consequences

What I find most appealing about potential regional revenue sources is that it gives the GTHA the collective ability to plan and manage its own future.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that if we successfully embrace the right mix of revenue tools to pay for aggressive transit development, both senior governments would readily join us as long-term funding partners.

We all know that major action is needed to address our transportation crisis. We know gas prices will continue to rise and air quality will continue to deteriorate. We know climate change is real. We also know that we can't go on with business as usual.

The new regional plan and parallel funding strategies to be released this summer represent our last chance to get it right and develop an unparalleled urban and regional transit network. Nothing will be easy, but failure is simply not an option.

Let the dialogue begin.

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